Gravure, flexography and offset printing are high speed printing processes that result in high quality printed images. The high speed results from the ‘stamping’ nature of these processes, where a printing surface has areas such as wells in the case of gravure, raised features in flexography and ink accepting and repelling areas in offset printing that form the print image. After the inking process, the ink is transferred from the print image to a printing substrate. High quality prints may be achieved using high viscosity inks with high pigment loading and due to printing at high pixel (or ink dot) density.
In gravure printing, the printing surface such as a printing plate has wells formed in the areas needed to form the desired image. The surface receives the ink and a blade removes any excess, so that the ink is captured only in the wells. The system then applies a high contact pressure to the printing surface against a printing substrate to transfer the ink to the printing substrate. A printing substrate may include paper, transparency, foils, plastics, etc. Generally, due to the high contact pressure necessary, gravure printing processes print to paper or relatively sturdy substrates.
In flexographic printing, the process has many similar steps, except that the system raises the wells, or inked pixels, above the surface. Ink transfer occurs with less force, so the process can use ‘softer’ printing plates made out of rubber or other elastomers more appropriate for printing substrates or media other than paper, such as transparencies, foil, labels, plastic, etc.
Flexographic and gravure printing processes have relatively high costs. The cost of the system as well as the cost of manufacturing the printing surfaces, also referred to as masters or printing plates, result in these processes only being used for high volume printing applications. An ability to manufacture less expensive masters and a system to utilize them would allow more applications to take advantage of the high quality and high speed of flexographic and gravure printing.